6 confirmed swine flu cases at Halifax-area school

The principal of Astral Drive Junior High School in Cole Harbour, N.S., says six students have been confirmed as having swine flu.

Bill Forsyth said 84 of his 544 students were not in class on Monday, an absentee rate of approximately 15 per cent.

"In routine flu, cold seasons, it would see us probably get close to five or six per cent," he said. "But this year, it's quite a bit higher."

On Thursday, Astral Drive's absentee rate reached a peak of 28 per cent, with 157 students not reporting to class. At the same time, nearby Eric Graves Memorial Junior High School in Dartmouth reported 35 of 208 students were sick.

On Monday, Halifax Regional School Board officials said 15 more schools in the region were reporting high levels of absenteeism due to illness.

Doug Hadley, a school board spokesman, said public health officials had been alerted about all the locations, but the board is not under any obligation to reveal further details.

"We're educators, it's not our place to provide information about individual students," he said. "If Public Health wishes us to communicate about H1N1, we'll do so."

School boards are required to notify the province if absenteeism hits 10 per cent or higher. Hadley said all of the schools remain open.

Education Minister Marilyn More said schools should notify parents as soon as the absentee rate is well above normal.

"Certainly we're well into the second wave of H1N1," she said Monday. "We've heard that within the Halifax Regional School Board, 12 to 15 schools have large increases in their absenteeism rates so obviously we're dealing with the pandemic."

Dr. Robert Strang, the province's chief health officer, said outbreaks at schools are to be expected.

"We don't want people to be overly alarmed by that," he said. "It is how this disease runs. We know that school-aged kids are at the highest risk of being infected, but it is spread out in the community."

Health officials are telling people to stay home if they have any flu-like symptoms.

Pregnant women

Strang said Nova Scotia will be receiving 4,700 doses of the unadjuvanted vaccine next week. An adjuvant is a substance used to boost the vaccine's effectiveness, but there is little research on how the H1N1 vaccine adjuvant would affect pregnant women.

Still, Strang said, women in the last half of their pregnancies should not wait until next week to get vaccinated.

"If we're faced with substantial H1N1 activity — and we are likely to have that happen over the next couple of weeks — it does take at least 10 days to develop a strong immune response from the vaccine," he said.

"Pregnant women are all of a sudden at much, much greater risk for themselves and their baby from disease than any theoretical safety concern over the vaccine."

The first clinics in Nova Scotia start Tuesday in the Colchester East Hants Health Authority.